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Health at a Glance: Europe 2016

State of Health in the EU Cycle

This fourth edition of Health at a Glance: Europe presents key indicators of health and health systems in the 28 EU countries, 5 candidate countries to the EU and 3 EFTA countries. This 2016 edition contains two main new features: two thematic chapters analyse the links between population health and labour market outcomes, and the important challenge of strengthening primary care systems in European countries; and a new chapter on the resilience, efficiency and sustainability of health systems in Europe, in order to align the content of this publication more closely with the 2014 European Commission Communication on effective, accessible and resilient health systems. This publication is the result of a renewed collaboration between the OECD and the European Commission under the broader "State of Health in the EU" initiative, designed to support EU member states in their evidence-based policy making.

Projections of public expenditure on health and long-term care

Health and long-term care expenditure in EU member states has increased rapidly up until the 2008 economic and financial crisis. At the same time, three-quarters of health spending on average is financed from public sources. Given that health and long-term care expenditure represents a sizeable share of government spending, it is often difficult to exempt it from any comprehensive budgetary consolidation efforts. In many countries, there are concerns that ageing populations may lead to growing health and long-term care spending while at the same time reducing the share of the working-age population to finance these public spending, creating pressures around the fiscal sustainability of health and long-term care systems (OECD, 2015).